Evolution Robotics is an American company specializing in robotics technologies from Pasadena, California. The product range covers computer vision, localization and autonomous navigation.
Evolution Robotics cooperates with Cambridge University for research in vision technology.[1] Software products of Evolution Robotics are licensed by the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology[2] and the Sony Robotics Division[3] and are part of WowWee robots like Rovio.[4]
In January 2010, Evolution Robotics released Mint (model number: 4200), a cleaning robot which dusts and wet-mops hard surface floors.[5] The robot systematically covers the floor line-by-line and cleans around the edges before it returns to its original position. Mint is one of the most quiet floor cleaning robot (it has no vacuum motor), but it is not a fully autonomous robot. The cleaning cloth has to be attached to the cleaning pad before cleaning and it has to be removed after it is done. It can cover 93 sq m (1000 sq ft) mode and 23 sq m (250 sq ft) in wet mopping mode. Mint uses a navigation cube as a beacon for navigation, and the original model is only able to handle one of these beacons at a time. The indoor navigation system is called NorthStar®.
On September 14, 2011 Evolution Robotics announced the second model of the Mint family, called Mint Plus (model number: 5200). The black robot is essentially a slightly improved version of the original Mint, supporting more than one NorthStar® cubes at a time, and the ability to continue work at the same spot if the robot was interrupted during cleaning (for cleaning cloth change). Mint Plus also sports an automatic cleaning solution dispenser that keeps the cloth wet during cleaning, and one of the two versions come with a docking station. The docking station is a charging stand where the robot has to be placed manually.